The Revolution did not have to happen. Beginning with the events leading up to the Boston Massacre of 1770 and picking up considerable steam with the calamitous reaction to the Boston Tea Party of 1773, the British government and its representatives in Massachusetts made mistake after mistake, culminating in the fateful events of April 1775.  In this series of presentations, we will tell the story of missteps and missed chances that led to the outbreak of the Revolution and the consequent loss of Britain’s thirteen North American colonies.

We will explore through multimedia how rock music has been influenced by and has sometimes influenced history. Videos, photos, and music will evoke memories, remind you of things you might have forgotten and teach you some things that perhaps you never knew.

We will discuss Coleridge’s great Romantic poem in which a mariner brings bad luck to his ship by shooting an albatross. The ship is becalmed, the sailors run out of food and water, strange creatures swim in the sea, a ghost ship approaches…